Yes, for the most part... Except when you write in C++ as though it is C, you get really bad C++ code. C++ has a different philosophy and a very different set of idioms.
Remember, a good Fortran programmer can write good Fortran code in any language. But that doesn't mean that every language is like Fortran.

C and C++ are two separate and very different languages.

Your social group is not skewed. There is virtually no anti-Russian sentiment in the US, for the simple reason that most people don't care about Russia. It has no real importance for Americans, and for the moment it poses no real threat.

On the other hand, the corrupt Russian leadership desperately needs an external enemy to blame all the country's problems on. It is much easier to say that the US is behind the current civil unrest in Russia, then to admit massive election fraud, responsibility for politically-motivated murders, police brutality, etc. This is the same "siege mentality" that prevailed in Russia for many decades if not longer, and it has been the excuse for every imaginable type of abuse of power.

If this is "radical and fringe", then I was perfectly right about the rest of the Russian media. With the Kremlin controlling the TV, it is no wonder it sounds like it did before Gorbachev.

I usually read ej.ru and grani.ru, precisely because they do not sound like "Pravda". Up until a couple of years ago I used to be able to watch Russian TV occasionally, and the news commentary sounded very much like it did in the old days.

"Yes, Saudis are your best friends. You even allow them to hijack planes in order to destroy skyscrapers."
Well, that is pure demagoguery. I never said I was happy about the Saudi government funding all these organizations. I specifically used them as an example, showing that even though Saudi Arabia is a radical Islamist dictatorship, it is still allowed to fund NGOs in the US, as long as they do not break the law.

"But, of course, your problem is Putin, Syria, Gaddafi, you name it."
Did I not just show you that the US cares very little about Russia in general and Putin in particular? Please try to keep up.

And what entire picture are you talking about? What entire picture justifies Putin appointing himself president, or mass murder of civilians by Bashar Assad?

"So you say and I have no reasons to doubt your good judgement. "
Not at all. I am saying that there is a perception in Russia that the US government has nothing better to do than to undermine Russia at every turn. And I am also saying that that perception is ridiculous.

"But if you are an American, the U.S. State Dept is accountable to you."
Indeed it is. And last I checked the Russian foreign ministry was supposed to be accountable to the Russian citizens and not to the Americans.

"Don't you think that we, citizens of Russia (forget Putin for now!), have a right to know what exactly were the 160 millions American dollars spent for?"
You know what's really funny? Whether you are a citizen of Russia or the US you can go to the website of the US State Department at http://www.state.gov/s/d/rm/rls/bib/ , look at its budget, and see what it exactly it spends the US tax payer's money on. You will also see that the total budget of the State Dept. is over 16 billion dollars, making the amount it spent on the Russian NGOs less than one percent of its total budget. Once again, that tells you how much attention the US devotes to what is happening in Russia.

By the way, what exactly is wrong with setting up an NGO in another country? Saudi Arabia has spent quite a bit more than $160 million on various Islamic cultural organizations and educational programs in the US. As long as those organizations do not break the law, nobody can stop the Saudis from doing that. Have any US-funded NGO's broken any Russian laws? Or did they steal oil from themselves like Khodorkovsky?

According to Putin and his propaganda machine, the US is not "about to meddle", it is meddling and is the root cause of every problem in Russia, including the fools and the roads. The truth is that the vast majority of the Americans couldn't care less about Russia, and the US State Department has quite a few other issues to deal with.

We are talking about cause and effect here. According to Putin and the state-controlled Russian media (which is most of it), everything in Russia is just peachy. It is the most democratic country in the world, which has just had the most fair elections of all time, and, as in the days of old, the Russian elephants are the most advanced elephants in the world. Given that, the protests are of course the result of the US meddling and nothing else. The point is that nobody is paying the people who are protesting against the election fraud. On the other hand the pro-Putin rallies are very reminiscent of the Soviet-era demonstrations for May 1st or November 7th.

The problem is that with very few exceptions all other major Russian news sources are also talking like it's 1982.

This is actually a quite major nit, and, with all due respect, you are absolutely wrong. "Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

You cannot define socialism as a system where the government provides varying levels of service and economic remuneration, because every government in every social system does that. In the US, which is arguably the most capitalist society in the world, the government provides lots of services including education, retirement, and welfare benefits, and employs thousands of people. Even in a feudal society the government, i.e. the nobles, provided defense at the very least. So the question is not whether the government provides services, but how much. In socialism, the government provides all or almost all the services and economic remuneration.

As far as the Scandinavian countries, no I would not characterize them as totalitarian. I would not characterize them as entirely socialist either. They are hybrid systems which have a huge public sector, but still allow private enterprise. They do, however, seem to have a lower level of personal freedom compared to the US (see the post by Kjella below).

Also, keep in mind that all the Scandinavian countries are much smaller than either the USSR or the US. Socialism, or even communism (e. g. Israeli kibbutzim) does seem to work on a small scale in some circumstances. However, it definitely does not scale up. One reason is simply the complexity of the problem of centralized management of a large economy, like the USSR. Another is the lack of incentives and lots of opportunities for the abuse of such a system.

Using 'socialism' as a scare-word started after the Soviet Union fell apart and 'communism' lost its ability to cause knees to jerk.

And that makes more sense, because 'socialism' was the name of the socioeconomic system of the USSR. 'Communism' is a name for a utopian society based on the principle "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs", which Khruschev promised to build in the USSR by 1980, but never did.

As someone who was born and raised in the USSR, I can tell you that socialism was exactly what we had there: state ownership of the means of production, and centrally planned economy (for a country of 180 million people stretching across 8 time zones!), with the prices of everything set by the state with no regard for demand. Oh, and, of course, there was totalitarianism as well. The two are by no means mutually exclusive. In fact, they do seem to correlate quite well.

I was in Jerusalem two years ago. Saw lots of Arabs. Bought a T-shirt from one in the Old City. Didn't see any cleansing going on. And speaking of getting "deeper and deeper into the West Bank", you do realize that we are talking about a strip of land about 10 miles wide, do you not?

Definitely! Too bad I don't have any mod points.